In a 108 second TikTok, @mckennaiseating holds a white takeout box up to the camera and opens with a claim: “This is my favorite crispy rice spicy tuna in LA.” The on screen text repeats it as “Fav crispy rice.” She says the order came from a sushi restaurant in the Studio City neighborhood and adds that she has already made a full video about that restaurant, but this one dish deserved its own spotlight.
The box is the first thing she points out. “You see how it comes in a little kit like this?” she asks, and the frames show it split into compartments: a golden crispy rice cake on one side, a tub piled with orange spicy tuna, a small cup of dark dipping sauce and a bit of green on the edge. “Have you ever seen that before?” she asks, and answers herself: “No. Cause they’re the best.”
The sauce is the surprise of the review. “It comes with this sauce. This isn’t soy sauce. I don’t know what this is,” she says. Normally she likes to dip crispy rice in “like a gallon of eel sauce and spicy mayo.” Here she says she has to be careful because the sauce is “so potent and flavorful” that she barely needs the usual extras. She also admits she does not know what is in it, so the video does not tell viewers.
Then comes the assembly, which she does with her fingers so she can show it up close without spilling. The rice cake is cut into triangles, and she praises the crisp outside and the thickness of the cut. She scoops some of the tuna mixture onto a triangle, which she describes as “deep, rich” and “delicious,” and then dips the bottom of the rice into the sauce. The frames show a tall mound of the tuna piled on top of one triangle.
She does not claim the sauce replaces everything. She admits she still takes some bites with the other sauces too. She praises the seasoning of the rice and the size of the tuna portion: “they give you such a big portion of the spicy tuna.” She also points out something that matters to anyone ordering the dish to go. “When crispy rice, spicy tuna is to go and it’s still this good, you know they know what they’re doing,” she says. Her closing line is “best in the west.”
The dish is built on a raw fish topping, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has guidance on that. On its seafood safety page, the agency says it is best to cook seafood thoroughly, and that people who choose to eat raw fish should eat fish that has been previously frozen, because freezing kills parasites. The page lists pregnant women, children, older adults and people with weakened immune systems among those who should avoid raw or undercooked fish. It also says not to leave perishable food out for more than two hours, or one hour when it is above 90 degrees, which matters for a box carried home.
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